About the WhatsApp Link Generator
A click to chat link opens a WhatsApp conversation with a number that the visitor has never saved. The format is strict: https://wa.me/ followed by the number in international form with no plus sign, no zeros in front, and no brackets, spaces or dashes. Getting one character wrong produces a page saying the number is invalid, which is why typing these by hand is a poor idea.
Paste numbers in whatever shape you have them. Brackets, dots and spaces are discarded, a leading double zero is treated as an international prefix and dropped, and a local number is completed with the default country code you set in the toolbar. Anything that is too short to route, carries no country code at all, or runs past the fifteen digit ceiling set by the E.164 numbering plan is reported on its own line instead of quietly producing a broken link.
A prefilled message is percent encoded and attached, so a customer arrives with something already typed such as the product reference from the page they were reading. The api.whatsapp.com/send form does the same job and is the one to choose when a partner platform will not accept short links. Tick the anchor option to get a ready HTML tag for a website button. To send people to your profile from a social post instead, the share link generator covers the other networks, and URL encode is useful when a message needs unusual characters checked.
How to use
- Paste one phone number per line, in any format you happen to have.
- Set a Default country code so local numbers are completed correctly.
- Type the greeting you want waiting in the chat box, if any.
- Copy the links, or tick the anchor option to get HTML for a button.
Common questions
- Should the number include a plus sign?
- Not in the link. WhatsApp wants digits only in international order, so plus signs, spaces and brackets are stripped before the address is built.
- Does the person need to save my number first?
- No, that is the point of a click to chat link. The chat opens straight away even though neither side has the other in their contacts.
- Why is my local number rejected?
- Without a country code it is too short to be routed. Set the default country code in the toolbar and the local digits will be completed for you.
- Can I prefill a message with line breaks?
- Yes. The text is percent encoded, so newlines and punctuation survive the trip, though very long messages are awkward on small screens.